Chenies Manor House in the parish of Chenies in Buckinghamshire, England, is a Tudor Grade I listed building once known as Chenies Palace, although it was never a royal seat or the seat of a bishop. It was held by the Cheney family from 1180 and passed by marriage successively to the Semark and Sapcote families and then, in 1526, to the Russell family, Earls of Bedford, later Dukes of Bedford, by whom it was held for several centuries. Although the Russell family soon abandoned Chenies as its main seat in favour of Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, Chenies parish church remains the site of the private "Bedford Chapel", the mausoleum still in use by that family.
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford set about improving the house both as his home and enlarging it to the size and standard needed to house the royal court, so he could host visits from the king. The house was probably constructed by him around 1530–1550, while the significantly larger north range, which included the royal apartments, has been demolished. Russell had a meteoric career as an adviser to successive monarchs, becoming wealthy and titled and acquiring other properties. By about 1608 Woburn Abbey had become the principal family residence. Thereafter, Chenies became increasingly neglected; the surviving buildings were the ones which were still considered practical.
At the northern end of the west wing, there is an undercroft from the previous medieval manor house which occupied the same site, which is a scheduled ancient monument (SM 27145).
History of the house The buildings are situated at a high point in the local landscape, south of the River Chess, which forms the boundary between Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. The general area shows evidence of occupation in Roman times, including a villa found to the north east of the church, which was occupied between the 1st and 4th centuries AD. A house on this site is recorded to have existed in 1165, when the locality was known as Isenhampstead. There is no specific mention of the settlement in the Domesday Book of 1086, but it is thought to have then formed part of the Manor of Chesham. The church of St Michael stands directly to the east of the current manor and has parts dating back to the 12th century, although it was extensively reconstructed at later times. A watermill also stood, on the nearby river, in the 12th century.
The first recorded Cheyne to own the property was Alexander Cheyne. It passed to his son John, who was sheriff of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire in 1278, and who was granted a knighthood. On his death in 1285 it was given to Edward I in payment of debts, when it was valued at £11 4s 3d. John's widow continued to draw a pension from the estate, and it was returned to Bartholemew Cheyne in 1296. There are records that the king stayed at Isenhampstead in 1290, which suggest a substantial house existed at that time.
The estate was referred to as Isenhampsted Chenies in 1321, distinguishing it from Isenhampstead Latimer. By that time it had passed to Bartholemew's son Alexander, and then by 1350 to his son Sir John Cheyne, who was also sheriff of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. Sir John was sentenced to death in 1397, commuted to life imprisonment, for being a Lollard. His successor, John Cheyne, was a member of parliament in 1413 and 1425, and also served two terms as sheriff. The estate was then transferred by John and his son Alexander to another relative, Thomas Cheyne and from there passed to Thomas' brother John Cheyne, Lord of Drayton Beauchamp. On his death the property remained with his widow as they had no children, and although she remarried was left in 1500 to her niece Anne Philip. On Anne's death in 1510 the property was left to her grand daughter Anne Sapcote. She married John Broughton, but after his death in 1518 she married again in 1526 to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, and thus the property entered the second significant family in its history.
John Cheyne's widow, Lady Agnes Cheyne, left the manor house in a contested will to her niece, Anne Semark, wife of Sir David Phelip, in 1494. It is believed Chenies passed to the Semark family of Thornhaugh, Northamptonshire, to re-promote the family at court. The Sapcote family was on the losing side with Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where Henry VII claimed the throne for the House of Tudor. Phelip married Ann Semark after Bosworth, Phelip had a close friendship with the Cecils of Burghley, the Cecils and Semark were kin.
Russell family
John Russell was a rising man in Tudor England, who from a modest gentry background created a dynasty by being a loyal servant to Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Edward VI, for which he was well rewarded. He fought in wars, was knighted, joined the royal household and became a gentleman of the privy chamber to both Henry VII and Henry VIII, became a diplomat responsible for secret negotiations, member of parliament, privy councillor, Lord High Admiral, in 1539 Baron Russell of Chenies, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and one of the executors of Henry VIII's will. In 1550 he was created Earl of Bedford during the regency for Edward VI, and was reappointed Lord Privy Seal by Queen Mary after Edward's death. On the occasion of his marriage to Anne and acquisition of Chenies, the king gave him a wedding present of the neighbouring Manor of Amersham. At that time, the income from three manors which were the property of his new wife, Chenies, Thornaugh and Covington was £70 per annum, while Amersham was valued at £43 per annum (at this time, the crown typically granted lands to new landholders for a fee of twenty times their annual income). Part of the Chenies lands were enfeoffed, transferred to a new landholder in exchange for taking on feudal obligations which came with the manor. Russell made improvements to the house, and was probably responsible for the south wing.
Henry VIII is known to have visited the manor several times, with a court and retinue which might amount to 1000 persons. In 1534 he attended together with Anne Boleyn and Princess Elizabeth, and was probably there at the time of the execution of Sir Thomas More. In 1541 he visited with Katherine Howard, and the house was mentioned in evidence against her as somewhere she had committed adultery with Thomas Culpepper. Sir John Leland visited the house in 1544 and wrote:
"The old house of Cheynies is so translated by my Lord Russell that little or nothing of it in a manner remaineth untranslated: and a great deal of the house has been newly set up made of brick and timber: and fair lodgings be new erected in the garden. The house is within diverse places richly painted with antique works of white and Black. And there be about the House two Parkes as I remember. The Manor Place standeth at the West Ende of the Parishe Churche. In the Parishe Churche on the North side of it, as in a Chapelle, be two Tumbes of the Cheynies Lords of the Manor and the small village bearing their name".(Leland’s Itinerary, fol 122)
One of the deer parks is described in a lease made in 1571 as covering 484 acres. John Russell died in 1555 and was succeeded by his only son Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. Francis had been part of the attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the English throne instead of the catholic Mary, and as a result had been imprisoned and then exiled. He took part in the Battle of St. Quentin (1557), which involved Spanish and French forces, and had recovered some royal favour by the end of Mary's reign. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth I he became a Privy Councillor and became a trusted member of the government as his father had been. In 1560 the house was restyled by Francis, who had made it his principal home. Queen Elizabeth visited the house in July 1570 and stayed for four weeks. Records exist of a survey of the house listing repairs and alterations in preparation for the visit, including 18 square feet of glass for the Queen's rooms.
Francis died in 1585 with significant debts. An inventory of Chenies was drawn up for the purposes of a sale of household goods and reveals many details about the house: It had nine principal bedrooms, three kitchens and an armoury with equipment for fifty men. There were two separate ranges of buildings for the accommodation of servants. Francis's widow died in 1601, when living at Woburn Abbey, and her will listed Chenies as unfurnished and unoccupied.
Francis was succeeded by his grandson Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, who was part of the abortive Essex Rebellion against the queen led by the Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. As a result, he was fined £10,000 and confined for a time under house arrest at Chenies. Lady Anne Clifford, the Earl's cousin, stayed at Chenies for a month in 1602.Thomas Dunham Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven (London, 1805), pp. 279–80. The family fortunes revived after 1603 when King James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne as James I, and Edwards's wife, Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, became a Lady of the Bedchamber to the queen, Anne of Denmark. In 1608 Chenies was again in the hands of servants and the Russell family never returned.
In 1627 the estate passed to Edward's cousin Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, who had become a member of parliament and a supporter of the parliamentary side in the growing conflict between king and parliament. Francis died in May 1641 before the Civil War broke out, but his son William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford was also on the parliamentary side, and Chenies was garrisoned with parliamentary troops. Graffiti found in the surviving medieval undercroft suggest that it might have been used as a prison at this time. William was part of the peace faction which sought to come to terms with the king, briefly defecting to the king during 1643, so that he took part in battles on both sides. William had an uneasy relationship with King Charles II after the Restoration of the Monarchy, but returned to favour in the reign of William and Mary, when he was created Duke of Bedford in 1694. By this time the Russell family had developed their estates in London (Bloomsbury and Covent Garden) as well as their other holdings around the country, and Chenies was very much a backwater to their personal and financial lives. However, the family continues to this day to be buried in the Bedford Chapel on the north side of Chenies parish church, next to the manor house.
In 1728 what is now the west wing was let as a farmhouse for £23 per annum. The south wing was largely empty. In 1735 the steward reported, "Chenies place is a very large old house, brick built with some very large and lofty rooms, but the apartments are not very regular and of not more value than to be pulled down." In 1746 the steward made a report on the number of windows because of the newly increased window tax, which went up from a maximum of 22 shillings for houses with 30 or more windows, to 2 shillings plus 1 shilling for each window: "The uninhabited part hath about 54, in the apartment I live in 34. Mr Davies hath 28. As to the 54, they may all be stopped up except 4 or 5, which rooms we lay up the old materials....Out of the 34 in my I can spare 12 or 14." The tax continued to escalate on larger houses in future decades. In 1749 Horace Walpole visited the house, and reported that it consisted of buildings on three sides of a quadrangle, in very poor repair with some of the roofs missing. He noted that some of the stained glass remained fine; not long afterwards it was removed. Window taxes may have led to the odd look of the southern, sunny, side of the south wing, which might have been expected to look out on gardens, but where there are now very few windows. The entire north range may have been demolished at this time.